Brigham Young University (BYU) has a history of success at PLANET Student Career Days (SCD). The team frequently places in the top 10 of participating schools, taking first place in 2003 and at this year’s 2006 event as the host school. BYU students also excel individually, particularly with regard to SCD’s centerpiece, the career fair. In 2003, of the 24 BYU seniors in attendance, 17 found full-time employment as a direct result of the career fair. And while not all BYU students leave SCD with signed job offers in hand, most have one or more career opportunities waiting for them on the other side of graduation.
So what’s the secret to their success? BYU Professor Phil Allen, chosen as the ALCA Educational Foundation’s Educator of the Year for 2006, say it all rests on preparing students for SCD as well as for the real world.
“I first attended Student Career Days in 1997 and we started bringing students in 1998,” Allen tells Lawn & Landscape. “Prior to that, we had what I would call a traditional horticulture program, but once we discovered the Associated Landscape Contractors of America (ALCA – now PLANET), and this event, it was an awakening of sorts to realize how much there is in terms of career potential for people in the green industry.”
Following this realization and conversations with industry leaders during SCD career fairs, Allen and his BYU colleagues worked to boost the program by tying it in with the university’s business school. Now, BYU students not only learn the techniques and science behind creating beautiful, healthy landscapes – they also minor in business to increase their professional knowledge of the industry.
As more students are drawn to BYU’s landscape management program, the faculty has stepped up to ensure that students are ready for their future careers, which often get their start at SCD. “We have a class taught each fall called Careers in Horticulture,” Allen explains. “In that class, we role-play interviews, critique resumes and have our students contact companies from the previous Student Career Days to start the networking process early.”
Allen also shares details on a unique event initiated at the university last year. “Several industry faculty members have discussed the fact that students learn a lot in college, but not always the things that specifically pertain to the hands-on leadership skills they’ll need in the workplace,” he says. Knowing that, with the help of well-known industry business consultant Jim Paluch and Dr. Steve Cohan, program coordinator at last year’s SCD host, the University of Maryland, 45 BYU students were immersed in a leadership workshop in October 2005. The experience yielded great realizations of teamwork among the students.
For three days, the students and faculty members from around the country went through leadership training, role-playing and small-team breakout sessions. “The quality of the young people at the event and their willingness to participate was phenomenal,” Paluch tells Lawn & Landscape. “We talked about things that I think some students may not realize they’ll be dealing with once they embark on their careers, like how to deal with arguments in the workplace or upset customers and how to set goals for success.”
Having broken into teams, the group headed outside with the task of building the site for the SCD landscape installation event. “The students divided up into teams with assigned leaders, but in order to lay out the site, they actually had to work together with all the other teams,” Allen says. “It took about and hour for them to come to that realization as a group, but it really made a profound impact on the participants. Individually, these students are competitive when it comes to grades and scholarships and employment, but this exercise showed just how important it is in the green industry for everyone to work as a team in order to build professionalism and be successful as an industry.”
With the success of their first Jim Paluch event, Allen says BYU will continue to have a workshop of some kind each semester and hopes to implement a series of events in which all BYU landscape management students could participate. “These events,” he says. “are one more way to help our students be successful in putting the skills they learn in college into action for their future customers.”
